Timmins Martelle Heritage Consultants Inc. (TMHC) works to establish, maintain and strengthen partnerships with Indigenous communities in Ontario. TMHC makes efforts to incorporate Indigenous community input into the archaeological assessment process whenever and wherever possible.
Advice on Regulations and Policies
TMHC staff are unparalleled in their familiarity with contemporary heritage governance in Ontario. With combined decades of experience either working within or researching government legislation, regulation and policy, TMHC continues to provide valuable insights to our community partners.
We can assist in understanding the Standards and Guidelines for Consultant Archaeologists and provide advice on how they can be adapted to support an Indigenous community’s interests. Our background in government and first-hand experience make us exceptional assets when negotiating with all levels of government concerning cultural heritage sites on traditional and treaty lands.
Capacity Building
A significant factor in Indigenous contributions to land management processes is the degree to which a community's administrative and heritage staff are capable of responding to increasing demands for participation. TMHC can help Indigenous communities take advantage of these opportunities by helping to design and build internal heritage management and oversight capacities, tools and processes. We can also train Indigenous community members in archaeological field, monitoring, lab and curation methods.
In training community members and designing heritage management tools, we appreciate and encourage adapting conventional and traditional approaches to heritage stewardship into new heritage governance and education models capable of being unique to each community.
Indigenous Heritage Stewardship
Through our relationships with Indigenous communities and appreciation of the role that heritage and traditional lands play in contemporary Indigenous cultures, TMHC is proud to offer our assistance with Indigenous stewardship projects.
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- We can assist in pursuing the return of Ancestors, sacred objects and artifact collections and the establishment of Indigenous institutions designed to house collections.
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- We are well-suited to investigating archaeological sites that compliment understandings of Indigenous histories and encourage leveraging those investigations to include youth participation, traditional land-use education and other community-led land-based activities.
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- Our education, experience and infrastructure make us ideal partners in collecting oral history and traditional knowledge and preserving these through GIS-based traditional knowledge and land use mapping.
When working on behalf of our development clients, TMHC meets and strives to exceed government-mandated Indigenous engagement and consultation requirements. We also encourage our clients to work with Indigenous communities to build respectful, long term relationships beyond their project-specific needs.